Federated Domains

Mode of Travel for Journey to Work measures the percentage of people who travel to and from work by a method other than driving themselves in a vehicle.

Active transportation (e.g. cycling and walking) is an important way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, air pollutants, fuel consumption, traffic and parking congestion, employee sick days, and healthcare costs. It also significantly improves people's physical and mental health, and saves households money on fuel, vehicle and parking expenses.

Although only 26% of daily trips made are commutes to and from work, these are the trips that set the traffic patterns for each day, resulting in the period of vehicle traffic congestion and therefore influencing the capacity requirements of the transportation network.

Generally, Edmonton is trending favourably in this measure with more people choosing to use active transportation and transit for their commutes. Increased environmental awareness, protected bike lanes, and an expanding transit network has made active and public transportation more popular. In coming years, Edmonton will continue to see significant infrastructure investments that will further encourage this shift.

This data is collected as part of the municipal census, which is conducted every two years. The Total % Commuting Sustainably column is the total percentage of respondents who selected “transit,” “walking,” “cycling” to indicate how they travel to work.

The City monitors greenhouse gas trends to know Edmonton's relative contribution to climate change. Climate change is currently largely being driven by human emissions or CO2 and other gases that contribute to the atmospheric greenhouse effect. The total amount of greenhouse gas emissions is derived from the emissions from landfills and the use of fossil fuels (natural gas, grid electricity and vehicle fuels) within the City of Edmonton boundary.

Climate change is an atmospheric warming (or greenhouse) effect largely being caused by human activities that generate emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

The City monitors greenhouse gas emissions to track Edmonton's contribution to climate change. Staff calculate Edmonton's greenhouse gas emissions using the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories, which is an international standard that allows the Edmonton to be compared with other cities around the world. This approach includes tracking vehicle, train and airplane fuel use, natural gas used to heat buildings, electricity used for industrial, commercial and residential purposes, and landfill emissions, as well as CO2 absorption from our urban forest and agricultural land areas.